best of the blotter: hootenanies, stoners, and strange fireballs

AVON:

SUSPICIOUS CONDITION, SCHWARTZ ROAD: Police received a report on Aug. 6 from a nearby resident about two carloads of “illegal immigrants” at the east end of the park who were changing clothes in plain sight, acting in an intimidating manner and who the caller thought were preparing to have some kind of “hootenanny.” Police arrived on the scene to find the suspects were preparing to play a soccer game. They were advised about changing in plain sight.

CHAGRIN FALLS

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF, SHOPPING PLAZA: A worker with the Village Service Department reported at daybreak on Aug. 11 that there was “extensive graffiti on the walls and pavement at the shopping center.” But officials soon discovered that everything had been done in chalk, including peace signs, as well as recommendations to “recycle” and “thaw out.” There was also at least one body outline in chalk on the pavement, as well as a door drawn to the “Chalk Zone.” A hose quickly dispatched all of the handiwork of the temporary taggers.

SOLON

WARRANT/UNLAWFUL RESTRAINT, AURORA ROAD: A warrant was issued Aug. 10 for a Solon man, 52, following an incident four days earlier in the checkout line at the Solar Center Giant Eagle, where a man unknown to a cashier, 19, became “flirtatious“ with her, saying he wanted to take her to Las Vegas with him.

He then took some time to direct racial comments at a customer behind him in line, then put his arms around the cashier and kissed her on the neck. She told him she couldn’t go with him because she would get fired, but when she reached back to get a carton of eggs he had apparently left behind, he attempted to physically pick her up, telling her “My jets are waiting.”

Then he was gone, but these tender moments were preserved on in-store security cameras, which led to the man’s identity being detected and the warrant being issued. As of Aug. 16, the suspect had yet to turn himself in.

OVI/POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA (MEDICINAL); U.S. ALT. 422: When police pulled over a Los Angeles woman, 29, for driving westbound at 81 mph on the 60-mph freeway just after 8:30 p.m. on Aug. 13, she was detained for suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, but she kept asking about her marijuana, saying she wanted it back.

What police found was a container of Jolly Ranchers candy with a label that said “Contains Cannabis — For Medical Use Only.” The Jolly Ranchers were confiscated although the woman claimed she had a prescription for them, which police said they were still waiting to see before releasing them to her.

The woman registered a .067 BAC on the Breathalyzer, which is below the legal limit of .08, although the charges against her still allege she was impaired.

MARIJUANA, N. COURT STREET: A 24-year-old Medina man was pulled over at Taco Bell, on North Court Street, for driving without headlights at 2:23 a.m. Aug. 6.

Upon further investigation, police discovered that the man was driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol and was also allegedly in possession of marijuana. He was arrested and charged.

MARIJUANA PLANTS FOUND, WHITEHALL DRIVE: A 4-foot-tall marijuana plant was found Aug. 8 in the rear of a house in the first block of Whitehall, next to a house in the 500 block of Prospect Street. The owner of the house said the plant was not his and might be a prank by neighbors.

HARASSMENT, SONTEY POINT DRIVE: An anonymous resident left a letter in a caller’s mailbox regarding the condition of the caller’s house on Aug. 11.

The caller explained that the letter, which had been typed, derided the condition of the caller’s house. The author of the letter hinted at the fact that he or she was trying to sell his or her own house. The author also explained that he or she does not like the caller’s blue shutters or the blue tarp that is used along the back patio.

The caller was advised that this is not a criminal act, but that it is rude.

DISORDERLY CONDUCT, FAIRGROUNDS: Police on Aug. 13 arrested a 29-year-old North Olmsted man during a concert at the county fairgrounds. Police took the man from the grandstands because he would not obey orders to leave the grandstands, where he had flicked a cigarette into a person’s hand.

While being arrested, the man told police he wanted to wear his hat because it was “a space helmet used for time travel.” The man also told police he was Jesus.

SPOILED SUNSET, PARKING DECK: Police found a juvenile girl sitting in the top-level corner of the parking deck on E. Liberty Street, around 9:15 p.m. Aug. 1. The girl said she was listening to music and watching the sunset. Officers, who thought she may have run away from home, called her parents and they came and picked her up.

FISHY SITUATION, RETREAT DRIVE: A 58-year-old man reported that someone left two bags of dead fish on the front lawn of his property.

One of the bags had a note attached to it, which read: “Clean up your lake.”

The assumption is that this action is related to ongoing negotiations between the homeowners association and Burgundy Bay — a neighborhood located across the lake to the west of Retreat Drive. The resident suspects that the person who did this is an opponent of the merger.

No further evidence was available.

SUSPICIOUS SITUATION, ABIGAIL LANE: In the late hours of Aug. 6, an anonymous caller reported a very loud party taking place at a residence on the street. The caller said that the people were shooting “strange fireballs” into the air and that the whole situation seemed very unsafe.

An officer arrived at the scene and spoke with someone at the residence in question. The resident explained that he and his family and friends were having a graduation party and that they had shot off a few fireworks. He told the officer that the party would be going inside for the night.

WADSWORTH ROAD: A pink battery-powered Barbie jeep was stolen from a Wadsworth Road residence between 9 p.m., Aug. 8, and 8:30 a.m., Aug. 9.

The jeep was in the backyard during the time of the theft. The value of the jeep was not known. Police have not identified any suspects.

SPRAY PAINT, S. BROADWAY STREET: Assailants used silver spray paint to damage several properties along South Broadway Street on Aug. 9.

The suspects spray painted the taillights and trunk of a car, which was parked in the 600 block of South Broadway.

The assailants also wrote “SAINTS” on a tree in the yard. Down the road, another vehicle was spray painted on the passenger side. On the corner of Broadway and Grant streets, police also found silver spray paint on a street sign, fire hydrant and the pavement.

The suspects had again written “SAINTS,“ this time on the road in the 100 block of Grant. Two other South Broadway residents reported spray paint damage to outdoor signs at their homes. No arrests have been made.

They sing while you slave and I just get bored.

Because some have nothing better to do with their time than micromanage in true Kafka meets Office Space form, amazing how condescension screams through the detachment of electronic communication, amazing that people care that much about stupid things, though perhaps in their world, things, especially monetary, generally mean more than people. Human resources are just that, something to be exploited to maximum potential until they're used up.

Well, he hands you a nickel,
He hands you a dime,
He asks you with a grin
If you're havin' a good time,
Then he fines you every time you slam the door.

And it's not that I'm unhappy, as things are overall good and even better than they were, but it's hard for me to suffer fools gladly especially those who make triple what I do who tell me that I'm so lucky and so wonderful until I'm not and then even the smallest misstep that no one will notice becomes the end of the world. I'll be working Maggie's Farm for a long time it seems under one person or another.


Well, I try my best
To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them.
They sing while you slave and I just get bored.


I'd rather not be on the radar at all, the subject of no conversation, the recipient of no insincere accolades or unfounded criticism, and on my end, I'm flexible and work hard and do my best not to be passive-aggressive. I'll blame this absurdity on the Vodka Zeppelin floating around the skies of Our Fair City.

I don't mean to be so angry, but I'm already walking on eggshells and I'm clumsy. I pray to God that I don't become bitter, and seek solace in the beauty of wind and water, in the meantime thankful for glasses that hide the tears that are welling up because I'm tired and all this does is remind me of the other slights and condescension. I've been a legal adult for ten years now. I pay taxes and hold down a job just like you do. It'd be nice to be treated like one for a change.

Shooting Fish in a Barrel

We Single Ladies are working the late shift and while I could be working on the next Great American Rust Belt Novel, we are instead snarking at the dudes on PlentyOfFish. Now, I'm not well-versed in the Arts of Love, but the men of My Fair City really need to step up their game unless they're looking for a fellow trainwreck or hookup.

Saying you're looking for a serious relationship while having your arms around two skanky chicks, not being able to spell, posing with a bottle of Jaeger or your theoretical motorcycle or showing off your bad tribal tattoos, sporting your best Affliction duds if you're wearing anything (because showing that much skin is not nearly as attractive to us as vice versa).

A visitor from another planet would assume that all of the male species in Clevelandia were either pale future mass murderers living in their parents' basement or fratboy bro types who listen to way too much Sublime. A little awkwardness is understandable, but Vulgar Displays of Douchebaggery were all too many. Take a look at these cybertastic pickup lines:

People call me Andrew, but you can call me tonight

Looking for a good-hearted women

Do you like pudding? I sure do!

Looking for someone to heal my heart

I'm all over the place, search engine that!

More than humpin'

Some of my well-intentioned relatives have asked me why I haven't tried the Internet in order to find my future soulmate but this along with the anecdotals of my friends, gives me every reason to believe that my gut feeling that such an idea is bad is definitely accurate.

teenage angst has paid off well...

So in walking past a major concert venue, I thought about the last ten years, and how each decade tends to have its defining genres and cultural benchmarks. Maybe it's too early to tell my wiser companion says, but upon consulting the Dictionary of Imaginary Places, as we are well-versed in the Bookly Arts, it's probably that whole emo thing when everyone my age and younger decided to stop listening to Limp Bizkit and move on to bands like one acquaintance of mine referred to as "As I Lay Dying in a Poisoned Well on Thursday's Darkest Hour."

After so many hardcore shows full of mediocre bands whose names and sounds blended together, the way that Myspace seemed to highlight just another clique of people obsessed with image and status with more exhibitionistic ways to express it, and I found it amusing to see it mutate into its own thing, hearing parents talk about how their kid is hanging out with the "emos" and such. What started out as something with some good originators (hello Rites of Spring and Sunny Day Real Estate!) ended up more or less being the love child of goth angst and hair metal excess of my generation. It was hard to tell the scene kids apart from Nikki Sixx after awhile.

I don't know if this is all as big as it once was, because my sister and her friends like all that kind of boring indie stuff and disdain the "scene kids" with their eyeliner and crazy hair. I see a lot of t-shirts of bands that I pre-judge as crappy and generic based on the neon dayglo designs (superficial I know, but Randal assures me that http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthese groups suck though he's more curmudgeonly than me).

Anyways, we found this in the dictionary of imaginary places, and the mentions of big hair and tattoos made me laugh. Click through, kids.



An island of Emo, where the savage natives have big hair that requires a lot of maintenance, tattoo each other until they're thirty, and worship a giant eel. Heck yeah. Teenage angst has paid off well, kids. Now I'm not-so-bored, but definitely getting old.

the claw decides who will go and who will stay

Today, from Craigslist

Claw Machine Jun 18 Chinese buffet Andrews Rd - w4m - 50 (Mentor Ohio)
Date: 2011-07-13, 2:46PM EDT

I know I should have posted sooner but it seemed to me you wouldnt find this here.. I was at the claw machine with my grandsons, grand daughters and my kids and you approached and asked if Id put a quarter in if you climbed in the machine.. Its been a while since I have been flirted with or flirted and I didn't understand what you were really saying and I made the comment the machine was 50 cents.. you said something like OH then definetly not.. and you walked out.

My adult kids were like MOM he was flirting.. WOW.. I missed out. You were a great looking guy in your 50's I would guess. Is it possible you really were flirting? Or were you just making pleasant conversation? If this was you tell me about you and about that conversation and who was playing the actual machine so I know its you. I really cant get you off my mind since that day and missed opportunity.

I get the whole mixed signals thing, but pretty much this gives me an excuse to post my favorite cartoon characters ever that aren't on Daria.

you know what? you know what?

I'd rather know that something is wrong and be told than to let it continue to go on to have the shit hit the fan now rather than later, but I feel my internal organs shudder when I get the impersonal communication devoid of context and enforcing a suffocating conformity to a norm that makes next to no sense outside of boardrooms and in motivational books.

I will smile and nod and say yes of course you're right, I laugh too much I smile too much, I'm too fucking human. I don't buy into this, but I'll pretend to because I need to eat.




But in reality I will say what I need to say, and not so much for cowardice as survival. I will try not to cry. I'm feeling resentful and not so much ashamed as understanding that the language that we speak is different than the language of those in power, that they will never understand us, and that we don't want to lose our souls to be them.

At least I have Kristin to cathartically rock out to in the car on the way home.

birthdaypartycheesecakejellybeanboom

As some of the more astute have noted, it's the people who really don't know squat about what they believe except for what they read in Left Behind paperbacks and hear on the radio, who are spazzing about the end of the world. The rest of us roll our eyes and keep going because there's always someone who says he's the second coming of whoever, and life just goes on, but I don't think where one's soul is at should be taken lightly.

For all the talk about it, none of them seem to be trying to save any souls from perdition in the meantime, and the lunacy of the very few gives my beloved cynics and pagans of distinction a golden opportunity to feel a bit smug about themselves, which can be funny, but usually gets old pretty fast.

Having heard all manner of conspiracy theory and speculation, and being a bit of a history geek, here's what they thought about what all that end of the world stuff would look like back then, what with all the comets, earthquakes, and political upheaval.


Babilon is fallen. Wherein briefly in vnfolded all the matters of greatest moment, which hath hapned from the rising of Iulius Cesar Emperor of Rome, to the present affaires (now) in Germany; and which shall ensue to the worlds end. Published according to the first copie, printed, Anno Dom. 1595

Christian information concerning these last times: Wherein all people may clearly see what prophesies the Holy Prophets prophesied of should come to pass: which of them is fulfilling, and which is fulfilled; and how the lowest part of the great image, that Daniel shewed to the King, is now a breaking to pouder, and by whom; whereby people may see, how very-near Antichrist, or the great whore of Babylon, is to her end. Also some prophetical passages gathered out of Jacob Behme's works, who prophesied and gave them forth, in the year, 1623. Concerning what should come to pass in these northern islands; and as he then declared them, they are now come to pass; and also what he said concerning the Turk, what he was, what he should do, and what should at last become of him. / Wrinten [sic] in the fifth month by F.E.

Englands second alarm to vvar, against the Beast. Saul, with his Edomite has shed blood to his power; he smites Israels city, and destroyes his owne house; overcame his people once, and overthrew himselfe for ever! It relates to what is done now. Grave questions touching the Edomite; his admission to court, and into office there; how it relates to papists now. He has a commission to destroy a city of priests, which he does with an utter destruction. Excellent reasons why the Lord suffered such a destruction to be executed upon Israel then; and why he suffers the same now; and why by an Edomites hand then and now



Great Britans [sic] alarm: discovering national sinns, and exhorting to reformation of life, and holiness, and courage in the battels of god against the Anti-christ, Magog, fourth-beast, eagle, King of Babilon, and Gog, and kings of east to bee fought by a lion, and fierce people of the north, which must burn the seat of Magog, and whole body of the eagle, and turn Gog the moon into blood according to the holy prophets predictions, and limitation of the beasts continuation and period, and hieroglyphical marks, and other descriptions of them al / collected, and knit together in this poëm by Christofer Syms Gent

A discourse on Antichrist, and the Apocalyps shewing that the number of the beast [chi xi sigma] ought not to be translated 666 but 42 only, that Christians have reigned a 1000 years, and that Mohamet is the grand Antichrist / by Richard Franklin

A looking-glass for the times being a tract concerning the original and rise of truth and the original and rise of Antichrist : showing by pregnant instances of Scripture, history, and other writings, that the principles and practices of the people called Quakers in this day and their sufferings are the same as were the principles and practices of Christ and His apostles ...

A perfect description of Antichrist, and his false prophet. [electronic resource] : Wherein is plainly shewed that Oliver Cromwell was Antichrist, and John Presbiter, or John Covenanter his false prophet. Written in the yeare, MDCLIV. By Abraham Nelson. And now published with an epistle to the Kings most excellent Majestie



A little vievv of this old vvorld, in tvvo books. I. A map of monarchy, wherein the state of the world is represen[t]ed under Kings, with their entrance, reign, and ends, from King Saul, to King Charls. II. An epitomy of papacy, vvherein is discovered the rise of Anti-christ, with the entrance, reign, and ends of the popes of Rome for 740 years, till the Pope was fully declared to be the Anti-christ. / A work fitted for the press five years agone, and now published, by Tho. Palmer, pastor of a Church of Christ in Nottingham

A plain and easie calculation of the name, mark, and number of the name of the beast. Wherein these three points are declared: first, the name (in the apocalyptical style) is no other, but the universal headship of the beast, opposed to the name, power, and headship of the lamb. Secondly, the number, in the same style, is the number of years to the setting up of this name or headship; in which respect it is called, the number of the name. Thirdly, the truth of the exposition is cleared, by agreement of all particulars, both in the text, and in the whole prophecy; and by the event of things, a sure interpreter of prophecy. / Humbly presented to the studious observers of scripture prophecies, God's work, and the times, by Nathaniel Stephens, minister of Fenny-Drayton in Leicestershire. Whereunto isprefixed, an commendatory epistle, written by Mr. Edm. Calamy

The great antichrist revealed, never yet discovered, and proved to be neither pope, nor Turk, nor any single person, nor any one monarch or tyrant in any polity but a collected pack, or multitude of hypocritical, heretical, blasphemous, and most scandalous wicked men that have fulfilled all the prophesies of the Scriptures ... and especially have united ... together by a solemn league and covenant to slay the two witnesses of God viz. the supreame magistrate of the Commonwealth, and the chief pastors and governors of the Church of Christ, and the Christian world is requested to judge whether [brace] the Assembly of Presbyterians, together with the independents, Anabaptists, and lay- preachers be not the false prophet ... and whether the prevalent faction of the long Parliament ... that killed the two witnesses of Jesus Christ , 1. Charles the First ... 2. William Laud ... be not the visible body of the same antichrist

'John the Revelator' is one of my favorite Blind Willie Johnson songs, and there's countless fantastic renditions of it all over. My first introduction to it was a long Phil Keaggy jam my dad had on CD when I was growing up, but this one with Jack White's ever-how-does-he-make-it-rock-so-damn-much guitar is pretty good too.

mayday

It's only May and my skin is already beginning to darken, between softball (in which I am improving, though that's not saying much), and the garden, and the left side darker than the right from driving around listening to Mudhoney, ending the night at a friend's birthday party where an attempt to have a night of music-making turned into something resembling an unplanned performance art piece, as the kids were banging on pots and pans while the grownups gamely tried to coordinate ourselves through basic three chordishness.

My life has become so much more quiet and the noise was something I've become unaccustomed too, but it felt good to play music with new people even if I didn't have my own guitar and beloved Silvertone and my hands were clumsy.

too much coffee yet again. I should have been sleeping by now, not drinking tea and listening to Siouxsie and procrastinating on doing any writing or anything useful.

tiki gods

And in more regional matters, the dumbassery of the Minor Powers That Were continues to be revealed and while some among the Peonage still maintain that the local Dems are like omg totally awesome the best ever, I doubt that any of us makes sufficient scratch to be bribing our favorite party bosses with tiki huts and fake palm trees.


And since Sony sucks, I couldn't post 'Tiki God' from everyone's favorite comedic Seattle band so you're all stuck with this.


Stay classy, dudes. Glad to know that my tax dollars are promoting good taste and general elegance in the Mistake By the Lake. Check out the Don King action on that tie! It's too bad I don't have swanky connections so I could see what kind of tackiness goes down in those wild eastern suburbs. At least the robber barons a century before you left us with some nice parks and some epic cemetery monuments.





At least his smirking mug is being removed from every gas pump and cash register in the kingdom of Cuyahoga, though we humble peons will no longer be able to draw devil horns with ballpoint pen or scratch his eyes out while our check goes through in a totally passive-aggressive manner anymore.



With my neighbors in hot water, shootings on the east side, stabbings in that wild country of Parmastan, it's going to be an interesting year. Here's hoping I can avoid the municipal courthouse this time around.

scams, paint, punk

At least the nights of insomnia and angst could end in sleeping and waking up to sun and snow. Henry Rollins is unsurprisingly sold out, but a message in my spam folder says I have some rich and deceased distant cousin in Malaysia with the same last name as mine so I'll be fabulously wealthy once I give all of my personal information to "Barrister Eric Anthony Esquire" and not ask the logical questions as to why someone Kuala Lumpur would have a long Polack surname like my own.

Meanwhile, in my fair city, the Powers That Be are more concerned about spraypaint than police brutality, because heaven forbid that the police union gets offended. I might be a bit biased to be sure, but this is everything that is wrong with the world encapsulated, with property and wealth being treated as more important than human life, and it's always the voiceless and the vulnerable who are more likely to get screwed in this twisted calculus.

While I love the non-legal artistry of those who make my RTA ride colorful, I've got no love for taggers either, especially the tagbanging types in my neighborhood who've turned vibrant graffiti spots into some macho lameness. But it bothers me way more that whenever I've called 911 I've been blown off by the dispatcher, that people who aren't creative class crackers get beat up at worst or ignored at best, and I know there's probably decent people out there on the force who actually do care about the city, but I get more doubtful by the day because I haven't always seen it.

space monkeys, storms of the yeti, and major players if all the world's a stage...

The morning ritual of snark and caffeine consumption via homemade coffee mug of madness and access to the internets is the opiate for we peons of all credos or lack thereof. Where else can we make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn, especially with impending Vortexes of Doom and Iranian Flying Saucers shooting monkeys and worms into outer space that can also fly indoors? I know what I want for Christmas now.



As this is a by default Charlie Sheen-free zone, that doesn't stop me from being amused by other candidates for celebrity rehab, especially party-animal second stringers for a band that I never got into but that others dig. My brother in the struggle and slack has Won the Near Future by rebranding such alien abductions as Sammy Hagar Weekends because he's funnier than me. As said not-DLR-Van Halen dude contributed quite a bit to the previous version of the Evil Empire, someone might want to check his brain.





Meanwhile in world news, Muammar says there's something rotten in the state of Denmark though there's a whole lot of rotten going on in his neck of the woods and it makes me wonder what would have happened if he saved his massive egomania for community theater/made for teevee productions of Hamlet like this one with a pretty glamtastic ghost of Hamlet's dad.



Because we need a little faux intellectual-ness added to this discourse, no?

one more thing to put in line / one more thing to waste my time

So the economy of my state depends on the prison industry and people drinking themselves into oblivion or some combination thereof, we can't fund NPR but we can drop bombs in Libya, even though life is hard in the rust belt, it's way worse other places, and the family is suggesting strongly that I invest in a security system because I live in the almost-hood but what's the point if the cops don't come when you call anyway. Besides, given my clumsiness, I'm the kind of person that would trip the alarm on my own as it is.

I don't mean to sound so surly, but listening to powerpoint presentations of bureautechnocracy in all of its mind-numbing banality will do that. To think about all of these people who think they should know all your business, under the pretense that it's for your own good is spooky as anything, whether it's those who see us peons as expendable human resources or the general nanny-statism that has become the norm over the last decade.

I know that I participate in my own forms of escapism as much as those I deride for obsessing over the Kardashians or the last episode of whatever people are watching on TV, hence the nights spent honing artistic skills and writing my Chinese Democracy of an unfinished novel.

Ah well, I'll be going home to crash from the comedown of all the coffee I've drank, finish up that damn midterm, and try to retrieve my brain from the absurdity of modern life. And while this band really isn't all that good, this song is pretty awesome for those days when I just need some abstract angst and Butch Vig-produced power-chordness that sounds an awful lot like that guitar sound on 'Nevermind.'

mummies and madness

So we've been massively entertained by the absurdity of English Pravda, with its lurid reports of Yeti femme fatales seducing "Caucasian Men," the space aliens ritually sacrificing our cattle in the great Intergalactic Slaughterhouse In the Sky, and this item which would be worthy of many world leaders right now who are in the hot seat but doubtless still want immortality.

Our favorite commie tabloid with tells us that mummification is the new cryogenics, so I hope Hosni Moobie, Pooty Poot, Silvio, and Mr. Muammar, are paying attention.

incoherence

I had all good intentions of staying up late last night to get my creative juices flowing since I go late in the next day, but Slowdive left me passed out on the couch next to a cup of herbal tea. Shoegaze was my first musical foray into the realms of non-corporate radio, thanks to older and cooler friends who used to be into the goth scene and introduced me to the likes of My Bloody Valentine and other Brits who preferred making glorious noise to having charismatic stage presence.

If I ever start playing in a band again, I want to do that too.

The sun coming through the windows and the faded green of the front lawn has me restoring order to my domain, talking on the phone with my mom, plotting gardening options, what can I grow on my balcony in containers (all that southern exposure), and will the next people downstairs be bothered if I get adventurous on the side of the house or the front yard.

And despite giving myself a self-imposed deadline for art/writing pursuits, I've been an even worse slacker than my creative partners. Too much L7 and giggling at the absurdity of post-Gorbachev Pravda. At least I can write better than these people, with the heady combination of Putinista propaganda and Weekly World News-worthy items that remind me of Calvin's show and tells and book reports in the greatest comic strip of all time.

It's an "Epic in Emergencies" when people dial 911 for frivolous reasons, three giant spaceships are evidently heading for Planet Earth, while the comments are full of weirdos talking about vengeful Greek deities, the usual conspiracy theory cabals, and general strangeness.

Meanwhile on the homefront, the brave Russians are struggling against Killer Icicles, the Olympic Bear of Discord is causing all sorts of drama, Moscow lavatories are a real test for Western tourists. Not only that, but the defense industry is revealing "striking novelties," and the Kremlin considers the space program "childish."

Any chance of a revolution here anytime soon? Nyet.

I know it's a matter of time before the inspiration hits again, and it'll come, it always does.

and I say to myself...

I miss reading the headlines of the Weekly World News while buying my groceries, but since truth is generally stranger than fiction and we live in strange times, at least the world has stayed interesting in its messed-up-ness.



Despite not believing in said religion, the Powers That Be in China have now banned the Tibetans from reincarnating, while in Burma, Than Shwe & Co. are letting out their inner J. Edgar Hoover on state television. Meanwhile in Belgium, (won't be winning any Gratuitous Use in a Serious Screenplay awards anytime soon I'm afraid), people are weirded out by not having a real government and are protesting in a manner that's half Lysistrata, half Full Monty.

Vogue is profiling the fashion and jet-setting lifestyle of another First Lady with a shady tyrannical husband (but she looks so good in her understated Chanel jewelry!) the Kids are crashing their parents' cars in Dubai, and while the logo below looks more like a deconstructed swastika to me, Iran thinks it looks like some kind of subliminal Zionist plot.



Gaddafi's nurse is heading home, while Muammar's homies in the western hemisphere seem oblivious to revolution when it happens against their friends. Cuba gets austerity, while the sultanates are magically creating 50,000 public employee jobs to keep the masses from revolting. No unions there, I'm assuming.

In these United States, Louis Farrakhan is still bffs with our man Muammar and thinks Scientology is a totally groovy thing for us crackers. Damn, those motherships are not friendly funky places staffed by (George)Clintonistas, and probably look more like this:



Sick, sad world indeed, my friends.

cowabungabunga

We all have our news cycle crack, and juicy gossip and drama draw us mere mortals like moths to flames or flies to honey.

For some of us, it's Justin Bieber or Kim Kardashian, and for others of us, it's our favorite World Leaders Fo' Real, as opposed to Stipe & Co's World Leader Pretends. I'm glad I'm not the only one gets immense entertainment from the antics of men with golden guns, scams involving black magic in Dubai, awkwardly gangsta heads of state, geopolitical bros before hos, and rantings about The Kleenex, The Facebook, and The Twitter from a former Reagan-era bad boy who's entered more into Crazy Uncle status, with his night nurse, fabulous fashion sense, and musings on the state of the world.

Thanks to Warner Brothers being lametastic, there is no accompanying music for those of us who reserve our Western Imperialistic Stooge ambition upon the Risk! board or the fantasy realms of D&D to the accompaniment of said college-rockers extraordinaire. Instead, I give you Michael Stipe wearing more eyeshadow than I've ever applied on my face in my life.



REM was awesome around the time that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hit the cartoon circuit, captivating the hearts and minds of many an aged Millenial. While my cousins and I never thought to tie decorative pillows on our backs to approximate the carapaces of our heroes, we did tie scarves around our heads and run around our dark basements fighting theoretical crime in the sewers.



I never found April as exciting because her yellow jumpsuit was way dorky and it seemed like she was always getting kidnapped and that's not as fun as being a pizza-eating ninja turtle. Google-imaging her is a perilous task because she seems to have quite a hentai fanboy following.

Though, with the exception of hair color, it turns out we're more similar than previously thought. She's supposedly working on a Great American Novel too.

TMNT did, however, introduce the word "Cowabunga!" into our vocabulary and also the existence of Italian Renaissance artists, who ultimately became much more interesting over time. Now, "bunga" conjures up a different kind of party that involves something other than pizza, though there is still an Italian component and a megalomaniacal bad guy with Mafia connections and a media empire who likes to hang out with other evil dudes.

Also, I can't help but notice a similiar complexion between Mr. Boehner and Mr. Bunga-Bunga.





Forget the Red-Headed League of Holmes & Watson, who else is going to be joining the Brotherhood of the Orange Skin?

In other news, the rest of the world needs to review their geography so they know where the Middle East is and what countries it encompasses.